


I'm gonna buy this place and burn it down.

by myhappyface



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-11
Updated: 2010-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-12 14:32:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myhappyface/pseuds/myhappyface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't think a man can change?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm gonna buy this place and burn it down.

**Author's Note:**

> Season 1 AU of/from "Blind Date." Minimal Wesley. Title from Coldplay song of the same name. Beta by carlyinrome, sine qua non.

Lindsey herds the kids into Angel's car, that long ridiculous stretch of American muscle, and they hug each other in the backseat, crowded together close as they can get. He shakes off the memory of piling into bed with his brothers, still small enough to fit four to a mattress, and when he looks up, Angel's watching him, gaze hard and flat. Lindsey feels his skin try to crawl right off, but it doesn't show on his face. Lilah's the only other junior associate who'll play poker with him anymore.

Angel tosses Wesley the keys and says to Lindsey, "You're riding in the back."

  
"There are some things I need to get from the firm," he says. He is thinking of: his office, his mentor, his laptop, in no particular order. He glances down at his hands: there's dried blood under his fingernails from Lee's grey matter. Probably Angel can smell it.

"Take it from me," Cordelia says, a dry sort of cruelty in her voice and no perceptible sympathy. "Whatever you think you have there that's worth going back for, isn't."

He nods. Seeing Holland again might not be the best idea.

"I don't think I can go home," he says. He hadn't meant to; she kind of surprised it out of him.

"Boy, do I -- oh, you mean your apartment, don't you?" She looks at him for a long moment, but he doesn't know what he needs to show her. She leaves abruptly; he's pretty sure he's not supposed to follow, so he sits at one of the desk chairs, stands, sits again. He keeps his hands off the desk.

He hears Cordelia's voice from the next room, briefly raised, and then he makes himself stop listening.

*

Lindsey has slept in some strange places in his life and he has slept in some uncomfortable places, but none of them approach the surreality of crashing on a couch in the den of his vampire nemesis' apartment.

As roommates go, though, he's had worse: he stays out all day, and Angel stays out all night. Lindsey shows Angel the courtesy of not looking through his things while he's gone, and Angel shows him the courtesy of not throttling him in his sleep.

He spends a day in the office upstairs, watching Wesley stare at a scroll he recognizes from the vault in Wolfram & Hart. He'd offer to help, but when it comes to dead languages, Sumerian isn't his strong point. Cordelia knocks him out of near-hypnosis with a stack of invoices dropped onto his lap. _What the hell_ , he thinks, and starts sorting.

The next morning, he finds a plate of scrambled eggs and toast on the coffee table next to the couch.

  
He's there for a week before he finds a new place, first three months paid in advance with a check from Angel Investigations.

He signs the rental contract with his own name. If Wolfram & Hart are looking for him, there's no way he can hide.

  
He doesn't have anything from his old apartment, had left that morning with nothing but the clothes on his back and forty dollars in cash in his wallet, five of which he'd spent on coffee. He tries not to think about what the security team had done with his stuff, burned or enchanted or worst of all nothing, guitar and clothes and truck exactly the way he had left them, busted-up boots still by the door, everything just sitting there and waiting for him to come back for it.

  
When he gets sick of wearing his increasingly bedraggled suit, he takes the last of the check and his cash and goes to the Goodwill, comes back with an old Army duffel stuffed with jeans, button-downs, and a hot plate. He lays in a supply of Ramen noodles with what's left.

It's a little like the least enjoyable parts of college: crappy housing, crappy food, no place to call home and wondering what the fuck he's supposed to do now.

*

A few days later, Lindsey opens his door and finds Charles Gunn standing at it. He remembers Gunn's face from their files -- _subject's new ally_ , he thinks, _twenty-one_ , and, _dead sister_ , before he reminds himself to stop looking for strategic weak spots.

He offers his hand. Gunn shakes it, amusement clear on his face.

"Angel sent me to round you up," he says. "There's something out there after his friends, and whatever it is already got most of them."

Lindsey is grabbing his coat and locking the door before he realizes he's muscle and not friend.

  
They stop at Cordelia's room first. Her hands are claws on the cheap bedspread, but Gunn takes one easily between his own. _Dead sister_ , Lindsey thinks.

"I guess that answers how we're splitting this up," he says.

"Watcher's down the hall. I've got some of my people on the entrances, we just gotta keep them safe until Angel gets back."

"Does he know who's behind this?"

Gunn levels a stare at him.

"Well, obviously, but what _specifically_ \-- "

"Face made outta metal and a scythe like the Grim Reaper is all I got," Gunn says. "Do you have anything to share with the class?"

"Clearly I am out of the loop," Lindsey says, "having conspired with an enemy of the firm to kill a client of the firm."

"Yeah," Gunn says, "things are rough all over." Lindsey doesn't have an answer for that, so he picks up the baseball bat he took from Gunn's truck and leaves to find Wesley.

Wesley's asleep when he gets there, which suits Lindsey just fine. He crosses the bat over his knees and settles down to wait.

  
In the dark, Angel says, "They were trying to raise something."

They're in the wreck of the apartment building, dredging through rubble, looking for salvage. Lindsey is standing in what remains of the weapons cache. A lot of the metal is torqued beyond their ability to repair, but about twenty minutes ago he found a sword Angel seemed to regard as an old friend, grasping the hilt and hefting the sword to test its balance. He had almost smiled.

"I killed Vocah," he says. "Knocked your buddy Lilah on the head when she tried to finish it."

Lindsey winces: Lilah doesn't even like Latin. He turns to where he last heard Angel and says, "Man, even if I hadn't, I don't know, resigned, the Senior Partners wouldn't have told me anything until they had to, probably five minutes before everything was scheduled to go down. They look at that sort of thing as a need-to-know basis, less probability of someone fucking up the plan."

"Our relationship isn't exactly built on a foundation of trust, there, Lindsey. Give me a reason to believe you." His voice is closer, now; it sounds like he's circling in.

"Look," Lindsey says, "you don't think much of me. You don't have much reason to. But I gave up a lot when I left. I worked for -- I picked a fight, and I picked a side. I picked _your_ side. If I knew what they were planning, I'd tell you."

He realizes he's holding his breath and lets it out long and slow. Angel doesn't reply, doesn't give any indication that this speech, which contains more honesty than about ninety percent of the things Lindsey's said in the past decade, has swayed or convinced him of anything. Lindsey goes back to his sorting; he can hear Angel rifling through a desk.

"You've made choices before," Angel says.

They don't speak again.

  
Lindsey isn't there for Wesley's halting translation of the Scrolls of Aberjian. He hears about it later, though, and for a moment lets himself wonder what it might be like to see Angel in the sun.


End file.
